Display assemblies provide information to a viewer through various techniques. In certain traditional implementations, the display assemblies were primarily mechanical, and provided information via mechanical gauges, pointers, and the like.
A common implementation of display assemblies are in vehicle instrument clusters. The digital assemblies interact with a central processor, for example an electronic control unit (ECU), receive information, and provide an indication based on the received information. The received information may be related to information about the operation of the vehicle, for example, the speed, fuel levels, revolutions-per-minute (RPM), or the like.
As shown in FIG. 1(a), which illustrates a prior art implementation of an instrument cluster 100a, an instrument cluster may include multiple gauges (for example speed and tachometers), graphical and numerical indicia 105 in which a pointer points to indicate a sensed condition of the vehicle, and a variety of lighted and digital information. Commonly, the indicia are either numerical or graphical (i.e. tick marks).
FIG. 1(b) illustrates another implementation of an instrument cluster 100b. Additionally provided in the instrument cluster 100b is a lighted ring around the gauges to provide secondary information. This prior art instrument cluster 100b highlights an attempt by a manufacturer to provide additional information through lighted guides to augment the already provided information to a viewer of the instrument cluster.